SF and Oakland Police Caught Illegally Sharing ALPR Data with Feds

2025-07-14
SF and Oakland Police Caught Illegally Sharing ALPR Data with Feds

Records obtained by The Standard reveal that San Francisco and Oakland police departments appear to have repeatedly violated state law by sharing data from automated license plate readers (ALPRs) with federal agencies. Despite a 2015 state law prohibiting this, logs show data sharing with seven federal agencies, including the FBI, since installing hundreds of Flock Safety ALPRs last year. At least one instance involved an ICE investigation. This has drawn sharp criticism from privacy advocates and officials, who highlight the violation of individual privacy. Investigations are underway, with promises of accountability.

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Tech ALPR

The Programmer's Prison: Escaping the Trap of Bloated Software Tools

2025-07-14

This article explores the dilemma of bloated software tools: to avoid user churn, tools constantly expand their functionality, ultimately becoming cumbersome. The author proposes several solutions: limiting tool growth (impractical), decreasing switching costs (through backward compatibility and standardization), leveraging FFI (Foreign Function Interface) and IPC (Inter-Process Communication). Unix shells, using IPC, allow tool composition, but data flow is unidirectional and lacks structure. PowerShell and NuShell introduce structured data, but interoperability and version stability remain issues. RPC (Remote Procedure Call) offers a structured interface but requires extensive code modification. The author concludes that programs themselves are prisons, restricting data flow and interoperability, and teases a follow-up post exploring escape strategies.

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Development Tool Interoperability

Japan Lags Behind in Generative AI Adoption

2025-07-14
Japan Lags Behind in Generative AI Adoption

A Japanese government survey reveals a significant gap in generative AI adoption compared to other major economies. Only 26.7% of Japanese respondents reported using generative AI, a stark contrast to China's 81.2% and the US's 68.8%. While adoption is higher among younger demographics (44.7% of 20-somethings), overall usage remains low. Similarly, only 49.7% of Japanese companies plan to utilize generative AI, significantly trailing China and the US, where adoption rates exceed 80%. The findings highlight Japan's need to accelerate generative AI adoption and integration.

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Tech

DIY Lightning Detector: Simple Circuit, Accurate Detection

2025-07-14

This article details a simple DIY lightning detector circuit using a single inductor tuned circuit to receive static pulses from lightning. The circuit boasts low power consumption and high sensitivity, with detailed schematics, component selection guides, and building instructions suitable for beginners. Several circuit variations are presented, including magnetic antenna and op-amp versions, catering to diverse needs.

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Lenovo Legion Go S: SteamOS Edition Crushes Windows 11?

2025-07-14

The Lenovo Legion Go S handheld PC comes in two versions: SteamOS and Windows 11. Benchmarks reveal the SteamOS version consistently outperforms the Windows 11 version in AAA games, boasting significantly higher frame rates and better battery life. While the Windows 11 version might be cheaper in some regions, its inferior performance and battery life make the SteamOS version the clear winner in terms of value. Ironically, the SteamOS version is surprisingly difficult to find on Lenovo's official website, raising questions about their marketing strategy.

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Purple Garden Lexer Optimization: A Speed Boost from 0 to 580MB/s

2025-07-14

This blog post details the author's journey in optimizing the Purple Garden language's lexer, achieving an impressive speed of 580MB/s. Techniques employed include computed gotos, zero-copy zero-allocation strings, an allocator interface, token interning, and pre-computed keyword hashes, significantly improving lexer performance. Further optimizations involved architectural improvements and using mmap for faster file reading. These optimizations resulted in a dramatic speed increase, transforming processing time from tens of milliseconds to mere milliseconds—a true leap in speed.

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Development lexer

Beyond OpenEXR? A Novel Approach to Lossless Compression of Floating-Point Images

2025-07-14

ArasP delves into lossless compression techniques for floating-point images, particularly those with multiple channels. He benchmarks OpenEXR (including the new HTJ2K codec), JPEG-XL, and a custom method based on Mesh Optimizer. Results show OpenEXR with ZIP compression is practical, while HTJ2K offers slightly better compression but worse performance. JPEG-XL achieves higher compression ratios but is significantly slower. Surprisingly, the custom method using Mesh Optimizer and zstd outperforms others in both compression ratio and speed, emerging as a compelling alternative for floating-point image compression.

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Development

TIOBE Index July 2025: Veteran Languages Battle for Top 10 Spots

2025-07-14

The July 2025 TIOBE Index reveals a stable top 7, but a fierce battle rages for positions 8-12 among established languages like Visual Basic, SQL, and Fortran. The report suggests newer languages could break into the top 10, displacing these veterans. Ada is highlighted as a potential winner due to its strengths in safety-critical systems. The TIOBE index, based on skilled engineers, courses, and vendors, isn't about the 'best' language, but offers valuable insights for skill assessment and strategic technology choices.

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Development TIOBE Index

Active Storage Dashboard: A Rails Engine for Managing Active Storage

2025-07-14

After 10 years of building Rails applications, the author found managing Active Storage data cumbersome. This led to the creation of Active Storage Dashboard, a mountable Rails engine providing a modern interface for monitoring and managing Active Storage. Features include real-time storage statistics, browsable interfaces, advanced filtering, direct download, orphaned file cleanup, and support for multiple databases and Rails versions. The article delves into the advantages of Rails engines and best practices for building robust engines, covering namespacing, configuration options, documentation, minimizing dependencies, extensibility, error handling, and security.

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Development Rails Engine

DuckDuckGo Doesn't Fully Escape Google Tracking: Study

2025-07-14
DuckDuckGo Doesn't Fully Escape Google Tracking: Study

A new study reveals that even using privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo doesn't fully protect users from Google's extensive web tracking. Google Analytics, AdSense, and YouTube embeds allow Google to collect data even when DuckDuckGo is used. The study, comparing the US, UK, Sweden, and Switzerland, found that over 40% of US websites still sent data to Google, despite using DuckDuckGo. Stricter privacy laws in Sweden and Switzerland resulted in lower tracking rates. The findings highlight the need to reduce reliance on Google services and choose independent, privacy-first alternatives across all layers of the internet, not just browsing.

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Android 16: Personalization, Gemini Integration, and the Future of XR

2025-07-14
Android 16: Personalization, Gemini Integration, and the Future of XR

Sameer Samat, President of Android Ecosystem at Google, details major updates to Android 16: Material 3 Expressive design language for enhanced personalization, simultaneous release with Samsung flagships, and deep Gemini AI integration for smarter search and assistance. Samat also discusses the future of Android XR, highlighting AI as its core driver, learning from the Google Glass experience, and partnering with fashion brands for stylish and practical AR glasses.

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Tech

First mRNA Vaccine Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Developed

2025-07-14
First mRNA Vaccine Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Developed

Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research have leveraged COVID-19 vaccine technology to create the world's first mRNA-based vaccine against a deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacterium. The vaccine, targeting *Yersinia pestis* (the cause of bubonic plague), demonstrated 100% protection against pneumonic plague in animal models. This groundbreaking technology holds promise for combating other lethal bacteria, offering a new hope in global public health. The study is featured in *Advanced Science*.

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Django Turns 20: Celebrating Two Decades of Web Framework Excellence

2025-07-14
Django Turns 20: Celebrating Two Decades of Web Framework Excellence

On July 13th, 2005, Jacob Kaplan-Moss made the first commit to the public repository that would become Django. Twenty years and 400+ releases later, Django is celebrating its 20th birthday! To mark this milestone, a celebratory website has been launched, showcasing global events and a 20-day fundraising campaign. The goal is to attract 200 new donors, each contributing $20 or more, with at least 20 monthly donors. Currently, $76,707 has been raised, reaching 25.6% of the $300,000 goal. Django promises continued evolution, with many new releases, a thriving ecosystem, and a strong community for years to come.

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Development Anniversary

Lasagna Cells and Galvanic Corrosion: Why Your Foil Is Dissolving

2025-07-14
Lasagna Cells and Galvanic Corrosion: Why Your Foil Is Dissolving

Have you ever noticed holes in your aluminum foil after baking lasagna or marinating meat in a metal pan? This isn't just a culinary mystery; it's galvanic corrosion. Acidic foods and salt create an electrolyte, forming a battery between the foil and the pan (often steel). This electrochemical reaction causes the aluminum foil to corrode, potentially introducing metal ions into your food. The article explains this phenomenon, recommending non-reactive cookware like glass or enamel, and safer foil usage techniques to prevent this reaction.

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cURL Drowning in AI-Generated Vulnerability Reports

2025-07-14
cURL Drowning in AI-Generated Vulnerability Reports

The cURL security team is overwhelmed by a flood of low-quality vulnerability reports, many generated by AI. These reports waste significant time and resources (3-4 people, 30 minutes to 3 hours per report), drastically reducing the efficiency of finding genuine vulnerabilities. In 2025, approximately 20% of submissions are AI-generated junk, leading to a sharp decline in the valid report rate. The team is considering removing monetary rewards or implementing other measures to curb low-quality submissions to maintain team sanity and project security.

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Development vulnerability reports

UK Mission to Search for Life in Venus's Clouds

2025-07-14
UK Mission to Search for Life in Venus's Clouds

A UK-led mission aims to definitively answer whether life exists on Venus. The mission will send a probe to search for microbial life, not on the surface, but within Venus's clouds. Recent discoveries of phosphine and ammonia—potential biosignatures—in the Venusian clouds have fueled this investigation. While these gases are produced by biological activity and industrial processes on Earth, their origin on Venus remains a mystery. Given Venus's harsh surface conditions, microbial life in the cooler, higher altitudes of the clouds is a more plausible explanation. The mission, VERVE, will hitch a ride on the ESA's EnVision mission, launching in 2031, and conduct an independent atmospheric survey upon arrival. Previous detections of phosphine were controversial, but further research suggests its presence varies and is destroyed by sunlight, explaining discrepancies in earlier findings. The detection of ammonia further strengthens the case for investigating this possibility.

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Tech Probe

East Asian Emissions Reductions and their Impact on Global Warming: RAMIP Simulation Results

2025-07-14
East Asian Emissions Reductions and their Impact on Global Warming: RAMIP Simulation Results

A new study uses RAMIP simulations to quantify the impact of recent East Asian air pollution emission reductions on climate change. The study finds that a 20 Tg/year reduction in East Asian SO2 emissions led to a 0.07 ± 0.05 °C increase in global mean surface temperature and significant warming in the North Pacific. Simulation results match MODIS observations of aerosol optical depth changes, suggesting that RAMIP effectively captures the impact of real-world reductions. The study also notes that other factors, such as increased methane concentrations and shipping emission reductions, likely contributed to global warming, but East Asian emission reductions played a significant role in the accelerated rate of global warming over the past decade.

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Idris Gains Binding Application: A New Language Feature

2025-07-14

Idris is getting a new feature called "binding application," a syntactic sugar that streamlines writing dependent pairs and other type constructions in dependent type programming. This avoids reliance on special compiler magic, making the power available to all developers. The post details its use in Sigma types, Exists types, Subset types, Ornaments, ForAll, ForSome, and even for-loops, showcasing how it improves code readability and efficiency, making dependent type programming in Idris more concise and intuitive.

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Development Language Feature

Telefónica Germany Ditches VMware After 5x Price Hike, Switches to Spinnaker

2025-07-14
Telefónica Germany Ditches VMware After 5x Price Hike, Switches to Spinnaker

Telefónica Germany, facing a fivefold increase in VMware renewal costs from Broadcom, has switched its support to Spinnaker. The telecom company was using vSphere with perpetual licenses but Broadcom's shift to subscription-based packages for VMware Cloud Foundation proved too expensive. Telefónica only uses vSphere, finding the full VCF suite unnecessary. While initially happy with VMware, the dramatic price increase prompted the move to Spinnaker, a platform already used for Oracle support. The migration is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. This follows similar decisions by other companies facing steep price increases from Broadcom's new licensing model.

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Tech

Critical Sections in Concurrent Programming: From Broken Attempts to Peterson's Algorithm

2025-07-14

This chapter delves into the implementation of critical sections in concurrent programming. It starts by introducing the concept and importance of critical sections, then progresses through several flawed attempts (e.g., naive locking and flag-based mechanisms), highlighting issues like race conditions and deadlocks. The chapter culminates in Peterson's algorithm, an elegant solution guaranteeing mutual exclusion and progress, while acknowledging the complexity of its correctness proof and practical challenges such as non-atomic operations and instruction reordering.

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Building Software Fast: Lessons Learned

2025-07-14

This post details lessons learned about building software quickly. The author advocates for setting realistic quality goals based on project needs, emphasizing a 'rough draft' approach where a functional prototype is built first, then refined. Strategies include simplifying requirements, avoiding distractions, and making small, focused code changes. The author also highlights valuable skills like code reading, data modeling, scripting, and debugging, and the effective use of LLMs to accelerate development. It's a practical guide for developers aiming to improve efficiency and deliver high-quality software.

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Development

100 Years of Quantum Mechanics: From Heisenberg's Letter to the Standard Model

2025-07-14
100 Years of Quantum Mechanics: From Heisenberg's Letter to the Standard Model

On July 9, 1925, Werner Heisenberg's letter to Wolfgang Pauli marked the beginning of modern quantum mechanics. A century ago, Heisenberg's work on Helgoland Island laid the foundation for modern quantum mechanics. In his letter, Heisenberg abandoned the classical atomic orbital model, focusing instead on experimental observations and laying the groundwork for matrix mechanics. Today, quantum mechanics has evolved into the most precise framework in the history of science—the Standard Model of particle physics—and shows immense potential in quantum sensing and quantum simulation. However, its fundamental interpretation remains controversial, sparking continued exploration and debate.

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Tech Heisenberg

Food Delivery Consolidation: A Giant's Game

2025-07-14
Food Delivery Consolidation: A Giant's Game

The global food delivery market is undergoing massive consolidation. Five companies now control over 90% of the market, evidenced by high-premium acquisitions like Prosus's purchase of Just Eat Takeaway and DoorDash's acquisition of Deliveroo. This consolidation creates network effects, boosting efficiency, but will likely squeeze profits from drivers, restaurants, and ultimately, consumers. Expect fewer promotions, higher delivery and menu fees. However, technological advancements like robot delivery offer new growth avenues. For investors, Prosus and Uber present relatively lower valuations compared to DoorDash, making them attractive options.

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arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-07-14
arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv only partners with those who share these commitments. Got an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

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Tech

OpenCut: A Privacy-Focused, Open-Source Video Editor

2025-07-14
OpenCut: A Privacy-Focused, Open-Source Video Editor

OpenCut is a free and open-source video editor for web, desktop, and mobile. Prioritizing user privacy, all videos remain on your device. While its basic features are currently behind a paywall, its ease of use has been proven. It boasts timeline-based editing, multi-track support, real-time preview, and is free of watermarks or subscriptions. Built with Next.js, the project includes UI components, custom React hooks, utility and API logic, state management, and TypeScript types. Detailed setup and contribution guidelines are provided; contributions are welcome.

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The AI Talent Bubble: Billions in Acquisitions Fuel a Frenzy

2025-07-14
The AI Talent Bubble: Billions in Acquisitions Fuel a Frenzy

Meta's and Google's multi-billion dollar acquisitions of AI talent signal a massive AI talent bubble. The value of top AI talent is skyrocketing, impacting both founders and key employees. This inequality stems from the parabolic growth of AI investment and the desperate need for skilled individuals. Traditional trust mechanisms are breaking down, necessitating a rewrite of the social contract between companies and talent. Only companies with strong missions and massive funding will thrive in this talent war, reshaping Silicon Valley's landscape.

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AI

The Epic Burning of a NeXT Cube: An Accidental Experiment in Tech History

2025-07-14

This article recounts the author's humorous and arduous journey to photograph a burning NeXT Cube. Initially a simple plan to burn an empty case, the author faced numerous setbacks and unexpected twists, ultimately culminating in a successful burn at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's burn chamber. The narrative is filled with dramatic irony and dark humor, reflecting the challenges NeXT faced as a hardware manufacturer.

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Tech

Arch: A Modular Edge and AI Gateway for Agentic Apps

2025-07-14
Arch: A Modular Edge and AI Gateway for Agentic Apps

Arch is a modular edge and AI gateway proxy server designed to simplify building agentic applications. It handles the tedious low-level work, such as applying guardrails, clarifying ambiguous user input, routing prompts to the correct agent, and unifying access to any LLM, allowing developers to build and ship agentic apps faster. Built on Envoy, Arch offers features like routing, guardrails, and observability, and supports various languages and frameworks. A simple currency exchange agent demo showcases its ease of use, with interaction via curl commands. Arch supports both model-based and preference-based LLM routing strategies and provides detailed logging and observability.

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Development Agentic Apps AI Gateway
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